By The Associated Press
Ladies, picture this: You search for weeks before finding the perfect gown for an inaugural ball. You're thrilled; its silhouette and color are exactly what you had imagined.
Then, on the night of the fete, you spot another woman wearing the same dress.
Oh, the horror!
A new Web site, www.dressregistry.com, hopes to limit these social nightmares by allowing you to "register" the gown you're wearing to a specific inaugural ball. It includes a place to detail the color, length, designer, neckline description and other distinguishing characteristics. You can even upload a photo.
The genius behind it? A man.
Andrew Jones got the idea after his wife traveled from their home in West Palm Beach, Fla., to New York City to buy a gown for a charity ball in their hometown -- solely to avoid seeing the same dress at the event.
"I kind of put two and two together and I said, 'I think there's a way technology can help us here,' " said Jones, a 42-year-old automotive industry consultant.
The dress duplication problem has long caused anxiety among women.
Hollywood's A-list stars know their garb may end up on a magazine page -- with a side-by-side comparison to someone who wore it better. Jones cited first lady Laura Bush's "Oh, no!" moment at the 2006 Kennedy Center Honors, when she was one of four women wearing the same red Oscar de la Renta gown. Bush quickly changed into something different.
"If it could happen to the first lady, it could happen to anyone," Jones said. "With the inauguration, it just all came together in my mind. I thought it would be a great time to roll it out."
At specialty stores in the Washington area, some thought the Web site a novel idea but suggested it may not be foolproof.
"Nothing's exclusive anymore," said LaShea Green, couture buyer at Saks Jandel in Chevy Chase, Md., who had not yet heard of Jones' Web site. "I don't care how much you register, there's going to be someone (at an event) who didn't register."
So far, inaugural partygoers have registered about 100 gowns for more than two dozen official and unofficial events, including the Constitution Ball, the American Indian Inaugural Ball and the Green Inaugural Ball hosted by Al Gore. As the inaugural festivities near, the registries keep growing.
"I've had people self-registering their events every day," said Jones, adding that he's recorded some 300,000 hits and more than 10,000 unique visitors since the Web site launched Dec. 1.
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